A Ticket To Nostalgia Hop Aboard To Recall Joys Of Dining Cars

April 04, 1993|by DIANE STONEBACK, The Morning Call

During the 1930s, "All Aboard!" was more than the signal to climb the steps and find a seat on the train. It also opened the door to some of the nation's best dining rooms which moved at speeds of 60 miles per hour or more and featured ever-changing views from window tables while gourmet foods were being served.

Crabmeat Olympian Hiawatha, mashed squash, scalloped Brussels sprouts, Richmond corn cakes and baked pear crunch with lemon sauce are just a sampling of the specialties served to passengers of The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad.

But one railroad line certainly didn't have a monopoly on good food. The haute cuisine that awaited passengers on inner-city and cross-country trains was impressive, as the nation's railroads used food as a "come on."

The food was good. No, it was excellent during the 1930s which are regarded as the golden days for dining cars, according to James D. Porterfield, a marketing instructor at Pennsylvania State University and author of "Dining by Rail, The History and the Recipes of America's Golden Age of Railroad Cuisine," (St. Martin's Press; $35; 384 pp.).

Porterfield cooked and tested his way through some 7,500 recipes to select 325 that represent some 48 different railroads. Buying the book is like purchasing a ticket to nostalgia. And reading about the railroads, their foods and the people who prepared the meals is a feast for the mind.

French toast served on the Santa Fe Super Chief; shrimp creole and upside-down pudding on the Illinois Central Railroad; steaks of a pound or more on Union Pacific; fresh shrimp gumbo from the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and the Cantaloupe Pie from Texas Pacific were some of the other well-known foods that helped woo passengers.

Closer to home, the Pennsylvania Railroad was recognized for its cream of chicken soup Roquefort; its melon mint cocktail; deviled roast beef with mustard sauce; ginger muffins and pennepicture pie (a type of raisin cream pie with meringue on top).

Reading Railroad's recipes, included in the book, are chicken creole soup and diamond cheese biscuits.

Even the Lehigh Valley Railroad made it into the recipe section with its Lehigh Valley Baked Apple Dish.

The railroads' culinary competition reached its peak in the 1930s when there were 1,732 railroad dining cars serving more than 800,000 meals a day. Today, Amtrak operates 67 full diners nationwide.

The competition was heated. Food often made the difference as to which ticket a passenger purchased when there was more than one choice of railroad between two cities.

Railroad magnates also knew that potential shippers generally chose rail lines for their cargo, based on how well the railroad handled its most precious cargo -- people.

As crazy as it sounds, some people actually ate their Sunday dinners in the dining cars and returned home. "They got on board just before dinner, dined, and then got off at the next station. They rode a `local' home," Porterfield said.

The State College-based rail buff and gourmet cook goes well beyond the basic story of crisp linens, polished silver, crystal glassware and award winning foods to be found in dining cars. He begins his fascinating history much earlier than the haute cuisine days on the railroads.

Finding food was of importance to passengers, even in the days when the train runs were supposed to be short.

"Although early train trips were scheduled to be of short duration, all manner of occurrence contrived against such plans. Derailments, ambling livestock, a slow-moving train, the delayed arrival of a connecting train, and even sabotage, often turned a scheduled two-hour trip into an all-day adventure," Porterfield explained.

He described the earliest days of soot-covered food that was displayed and sold at trackside when trains pulled into the stations. There was bitter, black coffee ("which may have been brewed only once a week"); salty, dry ham; "fried eggs cooked in rancid grease and served on stale bread," leaden biscuits and hard-cooked eggs that had been kept (for who-knows-how-long) in limed water to keep them from discoloring.

As a young boy, Thomas Edison and other "news butchers" provided the next phase of food "service" as they boarded the trains at every station and spent the time hawking food, papers, candies and all other sorts of items, often to the chagrin of passengers who would have preferred peace and quiet.

Evolving at the same time were station hotels, restaurants or eating houses that were established to handle passengers' feeding frenzies when the trains made meal stops. Passengers, of course, couldn't help the scramble because they had an average of 20 minutes to order, eat and pay, before the train pulled away -- with or without them.

As trains began traveling faster and for longer distances, the pressure was on to keep to tighter schedules. Railroad officials decided there wasn't time for passengers to get off the train three times a day for meals. Dining cars were their answer to the problem.